Modern Image USAhttp://www.modernimageusa.com
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 15:35:00 +0000en-UShourly1Digital Medical Records Mandatehttp://www.modernimageusa.com/blog/digital-medical-records-mandate/
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 21:17:49 +0000http://www.modernimageusa.com/?p=2187Continue reading →]]>A few years back, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed. This act required that all public and private healthcare providers to adopt and demonstrate the meaningful use of electronic medical records by January 1st of 2014. If they were unable to do this, they would lose their existing Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement levels. Because of this act, the use of electronic medical and health records has been widely adopted throughout the entire world.

What is “Meaningful Use?”

Meaningful use refers to digital medical or health records that:

Improve the quality, efficiency and safety of medical services and help to reduce health disparities.

Improve care coordination

Improve population and public health

Engage patients and their family

Maintain the patient’s privacy and security

Financial Incentives

In order to encourage healthcare providers to use digital medical and health records, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided numerous financial incentives. However, not implementing meaningful use of electronic medical record systems by 2015 were penalized with a one percent reduction in Medicare reimbursements.

Job Growth

The push to have more healthcare providers implement electronic health records hasn’t just resulted in better healthcare service for their patients. It’s also had a big impact on an interdisciplinary field of study known as health informatics.

Health professionals that boast the skills and knowledge required to develop, implement and manage IT software and applications related tot he medical field have already been in high demand for the past decade. That field is expected to see even more growth due to the American Recovery and Investment Act.

For example, in 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 12 percent rate of growth over a ten year period in positions related to health informatics, such as medical records information technicians, computer support specialists and computer systems managers.

Digitizing Your Medical Records

If you are still in the process of transitioning to an electronic medical record system, then you’ll need to digitize your physical medical records and health documents. At Modern Image, we will securely scan all of your medical documents and digitize them, ensuring that the digital versions of your documents retain the quality of the originals. The following are the steps we take in the digitizing process:

We will pack all of your medical documents and transfer them to our secure scanning facility, which has been independently audited for HIPAA compliance.

We will use production-grade Kodak scanners to scan all of your medical documents, checking the quality of each single one.

We will categorize and index the documents based on your specifications so that they will be easy to organize and access.

We will output your documents to PDF and then upload them to your electronic medical records system.

We can shred your physical documents securely if needed once they have been digitized.

For more information about our digital medical record process, be sure to contact us at Modern Image today. Our scanning and uploading process will allow you to demonstrate meaningful use.

There are a lot of benefits to scanning your company’s documents and uploading them to your computer system or to the cloud. Your documents will be much safer since there’s no risk of them disappearing or being destroyed, they’ll be easier to access through a computer system and you’ll save a ton of storage space.

However, if you’re thinking about scanning all of your documents on your own, you might want to reconsider. The following are a few reasons why you should outsource your document scanning tasks to our Modern Image professional document management service:

We’ll ensure the quality of each scan

Most businesses don’t have top-of-the-line scanners at their disposal. Even if you do, your employees may not be specifically trained to use them. If you attempt to scan your documents in-house, you may end up with several lower quality scans, whether it’s because the scanner was of poor quality or because the document wasn’t scanned right. This can be hugely detrimental for your business, especially when you’re trying to retrieve specific documents years later only to find that the copies are illegible.

Here at Modern Image, we use state-of-the-art scanners and our employees know how to use them. This means that we can ensure that every single digital copy will be of the highest possible quality – comparable to the original.

You’ll save time, allowing employees to focus on more important tasks

Scanning a few dozen documents isn’t difficult, but when it comes to hundreds or thousands of documents, you can expect to put some serious time into the process. It’s doubtful that any of your employees have the time needed to scan all of your company’s documents and that they have much more important tasks that they should be focusing on.

Not only will outsourcing your document scanning needs help to save you time, but we can accomplish it much quicker as well because of our capability of scanning in bulk; in fact, we can scan collections of documents that consist of more than 10 million pages!

We’ll upload and organize your documents as well

You can’t just scan your documents and call it a day, you have to actually upload and organize them so that you can find them in their digital format. We will index each one of your documents using a unique file name so that you’ll have no trouble finding them.

We’ll safely return or dispose of your documents once scanned

You don’t want employees that aren’t properly trained to scan, upload and organize documents to handle documents that are particularly sensitive. We will ensure that your documents are returned to you just as they originally were before the scanning process began – meaning that they will be in the same condition and the same place. If you want to get rid of the hard copies, we can do so in a safe, secure and efficient manner as well.

For more information about our document scanning services, be sure to contact us at Modern Image.

]]>How to Reduce Data Storage Costshttp://www.modernimageusa.com/blog/reduce-data-storage-costs/
Tue, 30 Aug 2016 20:08:25 +0000http://www.modernimageusa.com/?p=2150Continue reading →]]>Companies that have been around for more than a few years know how important their business data is. Unfortunately, the longer a company has been around, the more data piles up and has to be stored. Even recently established businesses will soon find out that data storage may end up costing more than they first thought. Fortunately, there is a way that you can reduce the costs of data storage.

The Cost of Storing Your Data

First of all, what makes storing your data so expensive? There are a number of answers to this question. Much of the data that businesses collect comes in the form of paperwork and documentation, from signed contracts to receipts and much more. While one sheet of paper may not take up much space, thousands of sheets of paper will.

In order to store these documents, you need some sort of filing system – whether it’s in boxes placed on shelves or in actual filing cabinets. Both of these things take up space. Many companies have to take into account the space they need for storing their data when renting or purchasing property to work out of. When you add square footage to a work space, you’re adding to the overhead.

In addition to having to allocate an entire room – or more – to storing essential company data, you’ll also end up increasing the cost of the utilities. You’ll be paying to keep that room cool or warm depending on the time of the year – even if it’s not being used. You’ll also be paying for the energy needed to light the room. All of these costs can add up to a substantial part of your overhead.

Reducing Data Storage Costs

So how can you reduce these costs? You can start by having all of your physical data, in the form of documents and the like, scanned and uploaded to your computer system. Once they are properly backed up – you can either pack these documents away or have them shredded. Either way, you won’t have to store them in a place where they are accessible to employees since your employees can simply access them through their computer.

If you’ve already got your data uploaded to your computer system, but are using hundreds of external harddrives to hold all of your data, then you may want to consider moving your data to the cloud. By doing so, you won’t need to maintain so much equipment – those external harddrives not only take up space, they eat up electricity as well. Once your data is uploaded securely to the cloud, you can access it from anywhere, which means those harddrives are no longer needed.

If you want to reduce your data storage costs, have your documents scanned and uploaded to the cloud so that you no longer waste space or energy, thereby reducing your overhead. For information about our data scanning and storage services, be sure to contact us at Modern Image today.

]]>Document Scanning Policy & Procedureshttp://www.modernimageusa.com/blog/document-scanning-policy-procedures/
Tue, 30 Aug 2016 19:36:18 +0000http://www.modernimageusa.com/?p=2148Continue reading →]]>Here at Modern Image, we have a thorough process in place for scanning, digitizing and either shredding or returning the original documents. We have experience with all types of documents, including documents that contain sensitive information or that are of great value, such as medical documents, historic documents, financial documents, legal documents, educational documents and more.

The following is a more in-depth look at the process we go through in order to scan your documents in a secure, safe and efficient manner:

We will provide a free estimate

We will visit the space where you are storing your documents in order to determine what the project requirements are and to estimate how many documents will need to be scanned. We will provide a free estimate based on this information.

Packing your documents to take to our facility

If you haven’t packed up your documents, then we will perform this task for you. We will make sure that the documents are organized the way they are found by carefully boxing them up and labeling everything. We will then take the documents to our facility, which is HIPAA compliant so that we can scan medical documents as well. We will make sure that your documents are secure during their transportation as well as while they are at our facility.

Scanning your documents

We are capable of scanning documents in bulk in a very efficient manner. We can scan collections made up of millions of documents using our state-of-the-art scanners. We also ensure the quality of every single document we scan by making sure each scanned document is of comparable quality to the original.

Digitizing your documents

Once the document is scanned, it is provided with a relevant file name and digitized before being uploaded to whatever network you are using. We can upload your digitized documents to an external hard drive or to a network in the cloud depending on what your specifications are.

Shredding or returning your documents

If you want the original documents returned, we will make sure that they are returned in the same condition they were in before they were packed up. We will also make sure that they were organized the same way as well so that you’ll have no trouble finding original hard copies when needed.

In some cases, you may want to have your documents eliminated once they’ve been digitized. We provide shredding services for such documents. You can be safe in the knowledge that we will shred all of your original documents once we’ve received prior authorization and that we will perform the task in a secure manner.

Once we’ve shredded the original documents, we will provide you with a certificate of destruction so that you know that your documents have been completely destroyed.

We employ a very thorough process to ensure that your documents are scanned in the highest quality and that your original documents are either securely returned or destroyed. Contact us at Modern Image for more information about our scanning services.

]]>Medical Record Scanning Policyhttp://www.modernimageusa.com/blog/medical-record-scanning-policy/
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 18:47:20 +0000http://www.modernimageusa.com/?p=2054Continue reading →]]>Health records are protected by a host of privacy laws and regulations, making medical record scanning a highly sensitive project. The extensive regulation–and penalty for not following the letter of the law–is a good reason why medical document scanning is a job best left for HIPAA-compliant professionals, rather than an in-house team without document scanning expertise.

Failure to follow the policies set forth by the government can lead to substantial penalties that have reached into the millions for some healthcare providers that have made scanning errors that threatened patient privacy and security.

Who Do HIPAA Regulations Affect?

The HIPAA concerns all information that relates to the past, present and future physical or mental health of a patient as well as the past, present and future payments for the provision of their healthcare. This can include everything from patient histories and patient insurance information to patient notes and forms. The law requires that all healthcare providers have documented policies that prove that measures are being taken in order to protect the private information of their patients.

The Importance of Hiring a HIPAA Compliant Scanner

Most file rooms are inherently not secure under HIPAA. A complete audit trail of who and when charts are accessed is possible with digital charts. The enforcement arm for HIPAA has recently leveled multi‐million dollar fines against medical practices because they could not produce patient charts in a timely manner. Scanning will also make it easy and fast to comply with HIPAA requirements to produce a complete medical record within 30 days of a patient request. (See article, HIPAA Bares Its Teeth: $4.3m Fine for Privacy Violation)

What Makes a Scanning Service HIPAA Compliant?

When scanning medical records with personal health information that is protected by federal or state law:

Paper records that are scanned must be stored in a secure manner before and after scanning

File names must be consistent so that the scanned documents end up in the right place and are easily retrievable when needed

Paper records must be disposed of in a HIPAA-compliant manner.

Sensitive information that is scanned must be protected using appropriate tools to maintain patient privacy and security.

HIPAA Compliant Scanning in VA, MD, DC, & GA

Modern Image USA has worked with many medical practices to help them clear space, improve patient outcomes, and comply with HIPAA. We understand the unique challenges that medical practices face when it comes to dealing with medical documents and files. We can help you transform your practice by providing the highest quality medical document scanning services.

Modern Image USA understands that privacy and confidentiality is important when it comes to your patients files, and our expert imaging consultants have many years experience dealing with both large and small confidential projects.

We are proud to announce that the University of Georgia Alumni Association has named Modern Image to the UGA 2016 Bulldog 100. The Bulldog 100 celebrates the 100 fastest-growing Bulldog businesses owned or operated by UGA alumni. Nominated businesses were ranked by a three-year compounded annual growth rate of revenues and were required to operate in a manner consistent with the Pillars of the Arch and in keeping with the values and image of the University of Georgia.

Andy Reiman (AB 97), president of Modern Image, says, “I started Modern Image to address the urgent need of business, government, lawyers, and medical providers to digitize their documents. As cost and technology barriers fall, the market for digitizing documents continues to grow at a rapid rate. We are very proud to be included in the Bulldog 100 class of 2016”

]]>Planning a DIY Scanning Project?http://www.modernimageusa.com/blog/planning-dyi-scanning-project/
Wed, 07 Oct 2015 13:41:15 +0000http://www.modernimageusa.com/?p=1882Continue reading →]]>Recently I was asked to finish a client’s DIY (Do It Yourself) scanning project, midstream, so I thought I’d tell the story in hopes that if you DIY, you can avoid these pitfalls.

My client is a Doctor who had retired and was in the process of closing up his practice. As he was shutting down, he very charitably allowed his staff to change gears from seeing patients to scanning charts. His staff appreciated the “parachute” job while they were seeking new jobs. The doctor wanted to clean up the old paper charts and get them locked down, in an electronic storage system. There were 3 people, working on 3 different computers and they scanned about 10 boxes of charts in 3 months. Soon enough, everyone found new jobs and embarked on their ‘next chapter’, leaving the task partially finished. In an attempt to help out, his retired practice manager took all of the paper charts to her house, so she and her daughter could finish. They had 53 boxes left to do. Once they were finished with 2 or 3 boxes, they’d had enough fun. So they called Modern Image in to help solve the problem.

Here’s where things got tricky. Since there were 3 people working on the project, there were 3 different ways the files were named. That makes the file names inconsistent and inefficient to use. The image quality was very bad on one scanner, and inconsistent on all 3. Images have not been de-skewed or properly rotated, meaning they are upside down and sideways. One set of charts is so blurry, they may not be of much use anyway. (But those paper charts have been shredded). One machine did not apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR), rendering them un-searchable. Files were named both “First Name” Last Name” and “Last Name”, “First Name”, making it virtually impossible to properly sort the scanned charts on the computer. The files were spread out across 3 computers, 2 flash drives and 2 external hard drives – in an attempt to “get them into one place” Not to mention the lax and non HIPAA-compliant way the physical charts had been handled, transported, scanned, and stored.

So we picked up the remaining 53 boxes, the 3 computers, 2 flash drives and 2 external hard drives. We scanned the charts and assimilated all files onto both external hard drives (one in his office, in a safe and one in a bank safe deposit box) We cleaned up the inconsistent naming so that they sort accurately and are organized properly. In under one month. We scanned and shredded all hard drives and paper files.

He is now HIPAA complaint, the charts are organized and searchable and he no longer has paper charts to secure or scan. We completed the project for one-tenth what it would have cost to DIY, with much better accuracy and delivery. We understood the problems, proposed a solution, executed the project and cleaned up a mess.

Problem solved.

Things to consider if you plan a DIY scanning project:

Set aside uninterrupted time for your staff to devote exclusively to scanning

Have them agree on naming conventions, file organization and storage/assimilation plans

Check and test all scanning settings to ensure OCR, de-skewed and image-corrected images. Most scanners have advanced options, if you know where to look.

Have someone check the quality of all work to ensure consistency and usability of images

Set expectations – timeline, budget, resources – to measure progress

Consider the opportunity cost of having key personnel or unauthorized eyes performing a sensitive task that can be outsourced

Get an estimate on your project so you understand your options.

We are here to help, whichever path you choose. We can advise or execute and help solve your paper problems.